


The Mistakes That I Make

by FaintlyMacabre



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Attempted Murder, Big Ol' Bag of Yikes, Character Study, Dubcon Cuddling, Gen, M/M, Non-Consensual Kissing, Non-Consensual Touching, fuck sazed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-17 22:29:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21550795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FaintlyMacabre/pseuds/FaintlyMacabre
Summary: “We gotta go,” Taako called, jumping into the wagon. His eyes were wide and he was starting to sweat but he was still as gorgeous as ever, goddamn him. Sazed thrust the tiny vial into his pocket, but Taako didn’t even notice.“What’s wrong?” He tried to keep his voice level.“Less talking, more driving,” Taako said, his voice tight. No ingredients or tools on him; he was just abandoning them out there. Sazed obeyed, the way he always did.Sazed character study, from just before Glamour Springs through the Day of Story and Song.
Relationships: Sazed/Taako (The Adventure Zone)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 28





	The Mistakes That I Make

**Author's Note:**

> I am in no way a mental health professional, but Sazed does display a few of the textbook symptoms of narcissism and antisocial personality disorder. It's not meant as a diagnostic tool, and I am not attempting to say anyone diagnosed with NPD, ASPD, or any other personality disorder does the things Sazed does. This fic is about an extremely unhealthy (not necessarily romantic) relationship. Please read the tags and take care of yourself <3

He’d show him.

All the work he’d put into this show, that asshole had no goddamn idea— the nights he’d stayed up, making repairs to the wagon, setting up the ingredients for the next day’s show, making sure everything sparkled just the way he liked it. All he wanted was his work acknowledged, second billing, was that so much to ask?

“And Sazed.”

That’s all. He’d repaint the wagon, all over if he had to, to make sure the kerning was right, reorder all the shirts and buttons on his own dime if he had to, it would all come back to him eventually, and until then he’d have something to show for all the sweat and blood he’d poured into this thing. Asshole just got to wake up in the morning and preen for a bit and be pretty and charming and everyone just ate it up with a spoon, hell, with their bare hands, anything to get a little bit of that Taako magic.

This was his show, really, as much as that glitzy bastard’s. Sazed’s fingerprints were all over this enterprise, if you knew where to look. Not that anyone did, except the two of them, and Taako wasn’t telling. It wasn’t a secret, he just didn’t think it was interesting enough. Didn’t think he was interesting enough. Just some square who was good at prep work and driving. Well, he’d fucking show him interesting.

He’d show him.

His hands had never sweat so much as the day he’d worked up the courage to finally ask. Taako was sitting on the steps to the stagecoach, writing in this little book he sometimes made recipe notes in, and he didn’t look up as Sazed approached. He was half relieved; maybe it would be easier if he didn’t have to look him in the eye, at least at first. Better to just start talking, he’d be more likely to get it out without interruption.

“Look, listen, I’ve really enjoyed working with you. I think what would be great is if we could co-host this thing, just like shared credit, your name’s up on the stagecoach and it looks awesome, but what do you think of ‘Sizzle It Up with Taako and Sazed?’ Just like shared credit, fifty/fifty split and we share the workload, share the glory, we just—” The sentence got away from him. “What do you think?”

“Well,” Taako had said, letting the word hang in the air, not even looking at him, “that’s so groovy, I love that, it trips off the tongue, you know, but um… I got all these t-shirts that already say Sizzle It Up with Taako—"

“I can get new t-shirts!” he’d said, needing to keep charging ahead, overcome all apprehensions, make him see. How many times had he practiced this in the mirror? “I printed those t shirts for you! So I can print out new t shirts.”

“That’s some bad business Sazed, I would love to help you out but that’s just bad business.” Taako had looked up by now, but still not at him. Look at me. “Sizzle it up with Taako is the brand, I mean, you’d have to throw all these in the junk pile and you can’t write on them, there’s not enough puffy paint in the world for all these t-shirts to add ‘Sazed’ on there, sorry. It’s mainly a merch thing, a license and merch—you know the brand?” Yeah, he fucking knew the brand. “You know, I got the logo painted on the side of the wagon already so I don’t know. I’ve already got my brand established, I just don’t think it jives.”

Why was he even bothering to turn away at this point? Taako still hadn’t looked at him. “Okay, all right, I get it, I get it. Okay.”

“Do you get it? Because I don’t want to keep having this conversation.”

“No, it’s locked in, definitely. I got it, Taako.”

“Excellent.”

_Fuck you._

He could act, too. He set out the arsenic-laced ingredients the way he set up for each show, calm as a still lake in summer. Took care not to look Taako too long in the eye. Everything was the same, he was still as devalued as ever, except now he knew the extent of it. Taako didn’t seem any different either—god, he really thought so little of him. Just breezed on through with that careless beauty that made everyone love him. See how pretty he looked dying from his own food. Poetic.

And it would be a tragedy of course. A shock to everyone, especially to his colleague, his partner, he’d seemed just the same as ever, as confident and effervescent as he did before every show. Everyone slips up sometimes, and sometimes those slip-ups can have disastrous consequences. Not to worry, of course, the show would go on, in his memory, Taako would want that.

And then there was nothing to do but wait.

What was taking him so long? Sazed tried not to pace in the wagon, it would shake. He usually sampled his cooking before this. _Not too late_ , he told himself. _It’s not too late._

The chicken was already baking and still nothing.

_Come on, come on._ Sazed had the bottle gripped a little too hard in his sweaty fist. _It’s out, just eat it, you bastard._

_Shit. Shit. Shit._

“We gotta go,” Taako called, jumping into the wagon. His eyes were wide and he was starting to sweat but he was still as gorgeous as ever, goddamn him. Sazed thrust the tiny vial into his pocket, but Taako didn’t even notice.

“What’s wrong?” He tried to keep his voice level.

“Less talking, more driving,” Taako said, his voice tight. No ingredients or tools on him; he was just abandoning them out there. Sazed obeyed, the way he always did.

“Faster,” Taako said from over his shoulder.

“That’s the third time you’ve told me that,” Sazed said. “The horses are going to need a rest soon, sooner if we keep up this pace—”

“Move over.” Taako clamped a hand down on his shoulder, harder than you’d think he could, to look at him. Sazed gave up the reins, and Taako drove the horses on even faster. It was all Sazed could do to hang on. Taako hadn’t lost that wild wide-eyed look but he seemed stretched thinner, like he was seconds away from unraveling. Sazed felt a lurch of emotion in his stomach. His boss/colleague/royal pain in the ass rarely looked so raw, so unguarded, rarely let that cool veneer slip, but here he was, more vulnerable than Sazed had ever seen him. He didn’t regret the poison, necessarily, but he was actually relieved that it hadn’t killed him.

Taako was so focused on the road that he’d let Sazed openly stare at him for several seconds without even a snide remark.

“Hey,” he said. “You gotta slow down.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Taako said without looking over.

“If you don’t at least slow down, you’re gonna injure the horses and we’ll be stranded.” He was sure he should be feeling something for the people they’d left behind them, but it just wasn’t coming. He knew there were roughly forty of them, had seen them gathering before the show started, but there was no way for them to mean anything to him. They were just a mass; he could barely even picture them now.

Taako had eased up a little on the horses. Sazed took that as a good sign. “Okay, so at the next town—”

“We’re not stopping,” Taako interrupted.

“The horses—”

“Will you shut up about the fucking horses!” Taako transferred the reins into one hand and pressed the other hand to his eyes. Sazed took them from him, slowly, so as not to spook. Wouldn’t do to have them run off the road.

“Where are the—” Taako’s raised hand slapped down onto his knee and Sazed realized he was looking for the reins. Shit, he really was fucked up about this. It wasn’t a bad look on him. Also, he apparently didn’t suspect anything.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he tried.

“Fuck, no, I don’t wanna talk about it!” The words ripped out of Taako’s body before he crumpled, his forearms landing on his knees, his head dropping so far his shoulder blades stuck into the air, making him look broken. Unsure, Sazed let his hand hover over Taako’s back before touching him. Taako flinched, but didn’t say anything or pull away.

“They all…” Taako started, his head still hanging down near his knees. “Fuck. I… I’m not gonna talk about… shit.”

Sazed tried hiding his smile, just in case. This was the best possible outcome, really: Taako thought it was his fault, and the guilt brought him lower than Sazed had ever seen him fall. Not so smug, now. Now Taako would realize how much he needed him.

“Don’t worry,” he murmured. “You’re going to be okay.”

When it got dark, Sazed led Taako into the wagon. Taako just let him, maybe consciously, maybe not. Either way, the horses couldn’t just run on through the night. He got them off the road, rubbed them down, fed and watered them, covered them with blankets. Taako was nearly catatonic, he wouldn’t have been able to take care of things like this.

Returning to the wagon, he regarded the slumped shape of Taako, leaning on the wall. This was much, much better than he could have planned.

“What are you looking at?” the shape said without moving otherwise. Normally he’d apologize or even just ignore something like this, go about his business, but there was absolutely nothing behind it now. He climbed in and got closer, crowding Taako. Taako still didn’t move. Sazed inched even closer. From here, he could smell what he thought was Taako’s sweat, and still he didn’t move away or tell him off. Sazed licked his lips, his heart speeding up. So low. He brought his hand up to the side of the shape to rest on one trembling arm.

“What happened?” he said. “Why are we running?” No answer. “What did you do?”

A choked sound came from the shape, and he had to remember not to smile. Elves have dark vision, it wouldn’t do to have Taako see how much he was getting out of this.

He decided to push his luck a little. “All those people at the show—did something… happen to them?”

“They’re all—” Taako began, before covering his mouth with one hand. Finally Sazed had managed to render him speechless. He pulled Taako into his arms—god, even as dead weight he weighed almost nothing. And he stayed that way.

“Shhhh,” he said, even though Taako’s silence persisted. “I’ve got you.”

The next day passed in the same sort of backwards haze. He told Taako how fast to drive, when to take a break in the wagon, when to take drinks from the stream they were following. The only thing he couldn’t make Taako do was eat any of the food they had with them. Not a problem presently, but he couldn’t let Taako starve himself to death, not now that he had him like this, in a way he’d never allowed himself to think much about prior. Finally things between them were the way they should be.

It couldn’t continue.

The world was only so big, smaller for fugitives, smaller still for fugitives traveling together. Even if he managed to lay all the blame on Taako, his name could still be tarred by association. Not much possibility he could parley that into positive attention; loathe as he was to admit it, of the two of them, Taako was the showman.

Sazed thought about his charge, currently packed safely into the wagon while he drove. Surely it was a problem for the future? The near future but still, not now. He couldn’t leave now.

The light waned until Sazed thought it would be prudent to stop for the night. Up ahead, chimney smoke rose and curled and the little hum of daily life in a little town drifted through the trees. Normally, they’d speed up to make it to the town before they lost the light completely, but in this case he figured better to spend as little time in civilization as possible. They could stock up on supplies in the morning, after a good night’s sleep but before too many people were out and about to see and possibly recognize them.

He tended to the horses and when he turned back to the stagecoach, Taako was still just sitting on the bench at the front, where he’d left him. He was staring into nothing, his shoulders drooping, his face devoid of expression. It shouldn’t have been surprising, given that he’d been kind of a zombie even before going 24 hours without food, but Sazed couldn’t get used to the sight. He stepped up, wondering if…

He put a hand on Taako’s knee, light, like he’d pet a skittish horse. Taako flinched, but otherwise didn’t move. So he put one arm around his shoulders, the other under his knee, taking care to balance as he stepped back down. Taako’s head fell onto his shoulder, and he felt himself shiver. This was new, almost nothing, and yet…

Sazed carried him into the wagon and set him down on a blanket on the floor. He looked more like a pile of limbs than anything.

“You have to eat something,” Sazed tried for the tenth time that day, and for the tenth time, Taako just turned away. He got an idea. He went for a half-loaf of bread they’d packed away.

“I know you don’t want to eat,” he said, sitting in front of Taako. “Maybe you’re feeling guilty, maybe you’re afraid?” No response, but he hadn’t expected one. “But you have to eat. You’ll die if you don’t, and I’m not about to let that happen. So here—” He ripped off a chunk of bread from the cut end. “I’m going to eat some, and prove to you it’s safe, and you’re going to eat some.” He took a bite, chewed, swallowed. “Perfectly safe.” He put the rest of the chunk into Taako’s hand, who, miraculously, took a tiny bite. “Okay, that’s good.” Taako took a bigger bite, and brought the rest up to his mouth without swallowing.

“Slow down, or you’ll make yourself sick.” Sazed caught Taako’s wrist. He could wrap his fingers all the way around it, and more surprising, Taako let him, without even a shudder this time. He held him there until Taako had swallowed the bread he’d bitten off, and then he released him. Taako finished the bread in his hand and looked up at Sazed, holding his gaze with no words spoken, no particular expression on his face, just looking.

 _He’s beautiful._ The thought had occurred to him before, of course, but he’d never really had the opportunity to relish his beauty like this, in a moment of stillness. He had to get closer.

Sazed brought his hand up and cupped Taako’s jaw, the fine bone feeling so fragile beneath his fingers. For a moment he just stroked Taako’s cheek with the pad of his thumb, reveling in his stillness and the smoothness of his skin. Then he leaned forward and kissed him.

A moment of tasting those soft, full lips, before—

“What are you doing?!” Taako’s voice was raspier than usual, maybe due to weakness or just disuse. And he was pulling away, and pushing Sazed back. Sazed lost his balance; maybe Taako had some measure of strength stored away, or maybe it was the surprise. He shouldn’t have been surprised, should never have hoped Taako would let him get close like that.

“Don’t ever fucking touch me, understand?” Taako said, dragging his sleeve across his mouth as he stood, and giving Sazed a wide berth, walked past him to jump out of the wagon. Sazed heard the crunch of his footsteps through dead leaves, and then the soft impact of his boots on the stairs to the stagecoach, and then nothing. His face burned, his hands tingled, his ears rang with the contempt in Taako’s voice. How could he have thought they might have turned a corner? How could he have dared to hope this smug, self-important bastard would ever really give him his due?

The first rays of sunlight touched his face where he’d fallen asleep in the doorway to the wagon, waking him. He blinked in the stillness, listening for any sign that Taako might be awake out there, but all he heard were songbirds. Maybe the wizard was too weak from lack of food to be awake yet. Or he just hadn’t realized that it was in his best interest to keep alert.

Sazed moved as quickly and quietly as he could, uncoupling the wagon from the stagecoach, waking up the horses with food and water. He untied them from their trees and hitched them up to the wagon. As he climbed onto the bench, he couldn’t help sparing one last look at the stagecoach.

The “Sizzle It Up with Taako” logo on the side looked garish and pathetic in the early morning light. If he’d had any doubts about leaving Taako to his fate, they were gone now. Still, it felt… unceremonious, the way he was about to leave the person he’d worked with—for, if he was being honest—for years without even a parting shot. But maybe that was the perfect departure: slipping away silently with everything useful his former employer had access to, leaving him with a guilty conscience and a conspicuous vehicle that couldn’t go anywhere. He shook his head. The time for concern with perfection was over. Perfection meant “no place for you” and “don’t ever fucking touch me.”

He felt like he should say something, even if Taako would never hear. He had a lot of choice words for him, but best to keep it short.

“Good luck,” he said, his breath puffing out in a cloud, “and good riddance, you selfish bastard.”

And Sazed pruned this part of his life away forever.

Too bad “forever” only gave him about five years.

They weren’t even particularly good years. He’d tried going back to admin stuff for a while, play to your strengths, you know. But no matter who he worked for, it wasn’t long before he began to chafe under their supervision; he kept seeing a contemptuous look that accompanied instruction from eyes that didn’t belong to the person in front of him, heard their words repeated in that stupid silly voice he’d told himself he’d never hear again. Every one of his employers fired him, except for the ones he beat to the punch.

So.

Strengths.

He tried cooking. He’d always been good at the prep and it’s not as though he hadn’t learned a thing or two. But it wasn’t as though he had any references; his only relevant job had ended in multiple homicides. He finally landed a kitchen job at some inn in the backwoods. That lasted a couple months. Until the owner told him what she thought of his cooking.

“There’s just nothing to recommend it,” she explained as they stood in the office that was also the broom closet.

“’Nothing to recommend it?’” Sazed flung out his arms. “You’re an inn in the middle of fucking nowhere, people would be excited about shoe leather as long as it was hot and cheap!”

“Maybe, but I gotta eat it every day,” she said, dropping the veneer of professionalism. “And buddy, I can tell this is way outside of your expertise.”

“I worked for the best!”

“At what?” she said, and there was no answer he could make that would actually help him. He knew how that conversation would go.

_I did prep work for Taako._

_The uniformity of the diced pepper ain’t really the issue… Wait, did you say Taako? I heard he went to some little town out east and the next day everybody died. What did you do? Were y’all so shit you gave everyone food poisoning? Or…_

“Look, Sazed,” she said (he hadn’t bothered to change his name, not like anyone knew it anyway), her tone softer now, “when you got here, I could tell you were kinda… unmoored. I wanted to give you some time to improve, benefit of the doubt, maybe the food was a little subpar because of stuff you had to deal with. It happens. But you’ve been here nine weeks, today, and the problem isn’t the fallout from some temporary setback. You’re just not that good at cooking.”

And so (after he’d raised his voice and she’d drawn herself up to her full height in response _holy shit dragonborn are tall_ ), he’d left the nowhere places behind and went to the first big city he came to: Neverwinter. And actually found work.

As a driver.

And he didn’t have flashbacks of easing the reins out of slender, shaking hands and gradually slowing the horses down from their breakneck pace, of uncoupling a wagon and a stagecoach in the quiet early morning just outside a small town. He didn’t even think about those early days when he’d hear “Time to go,” in that stupid drawl and literally hop up onto the bench, so eager to please.

He didn’t.

And it was fine; mostly local taxi-type work, no regular interaction with a constant authority figure. He rented his wagon until he earned enough to buy it, and then he felt, for the first time since that day in Glamour Springs, that he was the only one in control of his life.

Then there was that day, the one they’re calling the Day of Story and Song. It started with storm clouds, the ones that came on too fast, but all he’d thought was Hope it’s just bad enough that no one wants to walk anywhere, but not too bad to drive.

And then.

Then.

He knew. Everything.

The memories, the ones that were his own from some other life but mostly the ones that weren’t, hit him so hard that he had to pull over. When he started to recover enough to register what was happening he looked over at his passenger (guy had wanted to sit up front), who looked stunned. And if the first words out of this stranger’s mouth had been anything else, he probably wouldn’t have been caught off guard for the second time in a minute. But they weren’t anything else.

“Holy shit, Taako’s an alien.”

He hadn’t heard that name in years, but now, alongside the century’s worth of memories from six strangers and one smug bastard, the ones he hadn’t been made to forget but that he’d pushed down of his own volition came out to play. The slight weight of Taako in his arms, Taako’s lips against his, the tiny vial he’d ditched in that first town. And Taako’s celebrity, of course, of course, of course. People already knew who he was.

He didn’t think about what he was doing, but the next thing he knew he was in front of his apartment. His wagon wasn’t there and the soles of his feet ached dully, and the sky was even darker, impossibly so. The Hunger. He knew what it was called now. He knew what it could do. And he was afraid.

At least he didn’t have to watch it happen. He unlocked the door with shaking hands and there it was: the door to the storm cellar. He practically threw himself down the stairs and curled himself into the most remote corner, alone with an impossible number of thoughts.

When it ended, he was shocked to discover that he was alive; not only that, he still knew everything he’d “remembered.” Walking shakily through the streets of the city, he saw people in a similar state and worse, corpses in rubble, but there were also people embracing, and laughing even as they cried, and talking about the hundred years of memories they’d all received just hours before. All of them. And maybe it was just because he was expecting it now, but the longer he walked the more he heard one name in particular.

Taako would find him, more powerful than either of them had ever known he was. He’d flay the skin from his body inch by inch, kill him a hundred and fifty ways, for leaving him to maybe die if nothing else, if he hadn’t figured it all out by now. Having defeated his greatest enemy, what would take his time or attention away from going after Sazed?

There was just the one guy in the police station, as far as he could tell. A tired looking human at the front desk, who looked up eagerly when Sazed came in, maybe hoping for some news of the battle or its aftermath. But Sazed didn’t bother with pleasantries.

“You have to lock me up,” he said before the door had even shut behind him. The man looked startled, opened his mouth to ask a question. “Taako’s going to be coming after me. I did something, a few years ago. Glamour Springs. I poisoned forty people. Around forty. I made him think it was him. I didn’t mean to kill them, I was just trying to kill him. This is a confession, are you getting all this down?” The man scrambled for a paper and pen and ink, eyes barely leaving his face.

So, this was the end of the line. Not what he’d been expecting, but then, he hadn’t been expecting much. Realistically, he was destined for a life of anonymity, if comfortable anonymity. And despite the finality with which he’d parted from Taako, there were times when he let himself imagine a chance meeting, years in the future, events changing depending on his mood. Sometimes Sazed was rich and successful, famous, beloved, and Taako had been forgotten. Sometimes Taako was in jail, found guilty for the deaths of all those people all those years ago, and Sazed visited to comfort, to haunt him. Sometimes, they were both okay, maybe not great but okay, and they could put it all behind them. Sometimes he could almost imagine Taako kissing him back.

**Author's Note:**

> I used the timeline established in Ep. 43, Chapter 3 of The Eleventh Hour. Title is from "Piano Wire Number 12" by SHONE which is both catchy and "uh-real fucked up." The idea for the fic itself came from listening to "I am not the bad guy" by My Brightest Diamond a whole bunch on a seven hour flight.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! If you noticed a trigger I should list and didn't, please leave a comment.


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